Fine Art Black & White Photography

Tag Archives: still life

It wasn’t until late March that I finally got the chance to finish the double exposures which began life on my makeshift kitchen table studio. By then the late winter darkness had started to open up to the beginnings of spring and a weak sun shone through the bare branches of my chosen location. I had nicknamed this place Mirkwood (the title I also gave to one of my Stag Skull pictures that began this series of work), not only as a nod to the dark woods of J R Tolkien’s Middle Earth, but also to William Morris’s anglicised term for Myrkviðr the mythical black forest of Norse poetry. It’s a strange, sombre kind of place, tucked deep into the side of the dale and divided by a clattering moorland beck, while the high sided fells cut out most of the sun light. The ground has always been damp when I’ve visited, centuries of fallen leaves have turned the woodland floor into a marsh which sucks at your boots. The little direct daylight and the sodden ground has forced the trees to grow gnarled and twisted, hung with lichen and scarred by past winters, their knotted boughs creaking in the gentle breeze. The wood has proved inspiration for a number of my pictures and I never tire of the myriad of shapes the branches form, every corner provides something new, it really is a place that envelops you and takes you out of modern world.

As with the other pictures in the Dain Series I had taken multiple exposures in the studio to experiment with in the wood. So armed with four pre exposed film holders I spent the afternoon exploring the different contorted shapes of the ancient trees while all the time surrounded by the sounds of running water and early spring bird song. Hunting around the wood it didn’t take me long to find some possible backgrounds to compliment my fox, but one of the things I love most about this double exposure method is that no matter how much I try to envisage what my final picture will look like, it is not until the film is finally developed when I really know what I’ve managed to accomplish. But thankfully once again Mirkwood did not let me down and one of the negative compositions turned out just how I hoped.

In my last post I spoke about the new Gallerina HQ opening it’s doors to the public and how I had pushed myself to create some new work for this special occasion. Well so far the response from the public for my latest pictures has been tremendous, it’s been so great it has inspired me to expirement more and see where it takes me.

One of the most daunting aspects of these multiple exposure pictures is choosing to work in a studio (as you can see it’s a very make shift one on my kitchen table) for the first time in a decade. It’s been a long time since I had to deal with the complications of lighting and I’d almost completely forgotten anything about compensating for extra bellows expansion or the dread Reciprocity Failure. The memories of my student days, and the boxes of beautiful Polaroid film I would waste, send shivers down my spine, trying to get my lighting and exposure right, it would cost me a fortune now!

But as an artist we should challenge ourselves, it can be so easy to stick to what you know, to follow the well worn path that you have created for yourself, mostly because it feels safe. Any artistic process involves putting a certain amount of your own emotions and personality into your creation, so there is always an irrational fear of it failing and being criticized, and you with it. But these fears are irrational, artistic expression will always be open to interpretation and we should fight against being stuck in that rut! Because that is often when we achieve something we are really proud of! Oh and I still haven’t remembered how to compensate for bellows expansion and Reciprocity Failure and I’m not sure I ever did, I think I may have always been working on intuition..